Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Hawk Eternal

I finished this book on the plane back from Hawaii. It is the sequel to Ironhand's Daughter by David Gemmell. It's an excellent novel about the clans of the northern mountains and their struggle for survival against the vicious invaders from far away lands. Like the first book, this one had a choppy feel to it and it bothered me until I realized that it was written like a series of episodes rather than one continuous tale. After that, I settled in and read it like I was watching a good TV series. It has a convoluted time travel plot through some Gates that were created long ago and are managed by a sect of druids. And there are the battle scenes where the highlanders kick butt. All this is good but in the end there is the story of duty and honor and sacrifice which always seems to bring a tear to my eye. This is another very good Gemmell book, which is to be expected.

5 comments:

I haven't read either one of those books, but they sound interesting. Guess I'll be taking a trip to the center of town soon, to see if the tiny local county library has Gemmell stuff. They do happen to have a sizable collection of Louis L'Amour and Piers Anthony, though.

Just about any Gemmell book should be good, I particularly liked Ravenheart. Piers Anthony... I read the first six or so books of the Xanth series when they first came out but they soon became all the same. Now I think he's just a brand name that the publisher keeps pumping out, he may not even write them any more.

Seems like dropping certain names like stones into almost any group of writers eddying at the edges of a writers conference can bring instant reaction, good or ill. The aforementioned Western and spec authors are two such names.

And I've yet to enter a small-town library without either. Why is that?

(I grew up on Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour stories; LL didn't much care for ZG.)

I am hunting for this book. I read Ironhand's Daughter last year and it blew me away. Gemmell just gets right down to the story and doesn't just pile words on the page. That novel was so lean and packed with action and character. A welcome change from the usual bloated fantasy doorstops, imo.